Tanzania became independent in conditions quite different from
those in Algeria. In particular, it had not had to wage an armed
struggle nor to mobilize the poorest strata of the population.
Nevertheless, by 1967, important events had led the ruling strata
and the state to formulate a development strategy that was rather
unusual in the region. In 1967, when the dominant development
theory reigned unchallenged over Africa, and before the
publication (or wide diffusion on the continent) of works that
were subsequently to become dependency theory and autocentred
development classics, the Arusha Declaration proclaimed the need
for self-reliance and African socialism. The ruling Tanganyika
African National Union (TANU) noted the failure of the planning
strategies implemented during the early years of independence and
declared its determination to ensure that Tanzania controlled its
process of accumulation, and became a socialist country
simultaneously realizing high economic growth rates and a fairer
distribution of access to wealth. Agriculture and the rural areas
were chosen for the application of the new policy as well as for
their relations with the rest of the economy and society. In what
are known as the 'Dar es Salaam debates'.11 there was
no debate on control of accumulation in the context of the
strategy and specific economic policy of African states. The
debate on the economic plan remained at a very general level and
concerned the nature of capital and its transformations. Tandon
distinguishes three phases, not combined but successive: the
first saw a debate between progressives and reactionaries which
ended in the elimination of structured reactionary thought in the
University: the second saw a debate between advocates of
dependency theory and supporters of bourgeois political economy,
which ended in the latter's defeat; and the third, a debate
within the left, ended in the return of classical Marxist
thought, dependency theory advocates being classified among the
neo-Marxists. In criticizing these debates, an Indian scholar saw
them as taking place purely between intellectuals without
concrete practice. My own opinion is that above all the debates
missed a good opportunity to draw up a balance sheet of the
experience from the viewpoint of the left, not only at the
general but also at the sectoral level and, specifically, the
level of agriculture.

That the left critique did not bear directly on the Tanzanian
development strategy left the field open to international big
capital to make its own diagnosis of the crisis and propose
solutions to its own advantage. That is the meaning of the
critique of the right which, although it had left the University,
as Tandon stresses, is still very active in practice: through
pressure on the government from institutions such as the IMF and
the World Bank; in theory: by making new proposals to maximize
growth rates, especially by giving priority to export crops.12

In so far as this domination by the interests of capital both
in theory and practice hampers the development of struggles for a
more autonomous and popular type of development, the left
critique must show the real limits of the endeavours of TANU and
its state. This was an invitation to the protagonists in the 'Dar
es Salaam debates' to engage in a more detailed but theoretically
oriented examination of the balance sheet and prospects of the
Tanzanian experience. Noted here, are simply the results of these
attempts: a) to reduce the extent to which agriculture simply
acts as a provider of foreign exchange; b) to gain control of the
segments of the process of accumulation: c) to change production
relations in agriculture in the direction of nationalization

Attempts to reduce the role of the export sector: Since
in Africa, specialization in the export of raw agricultural
produce had been established by the colonialists, with all the
disadvantages that involved, it seems relevant to decolonize
agriculture by giving priority to those functions, linked to
expansion of the domestic market and consumption Tanzania had
specialized particularly in sisal and coffee production,
accumulation giving pride of place to this largely
settler-controlled sector. The sub-sector producing for mass
consumption, in both urban and rural areas, comprised first,
cereals, accounting for 30% (primarily maize, followed by sorghum
and millet consumed mainly in the rural areas) and pulses;
second, roots and tubers (mainly consumed in the rural areas).
Fresh vegetables, fruit and meat consumed in the towns can be
classified as luxury items, although the size of the livestock
population in Tanzania makes meat less scarce than in many other
African countries.

Once the leaders had decided to reorient agricultural
activities towards these latter two sectors, what happened to the
evolution of production?

During the first decade of independence, that is, before the
decisions arising from the Arusha Declaration had been
implemented' the overall product increased regularly, while
agriculture GDP and food agriculture GDP stagnated. During the
second decade, the product fell by 1.9% per annum on average: per
capita agriculture GDP and food agriculture GDP collapsed. On the
whole, the crisis in production for the domestic market was less
acute than that for export crops. In use value, production of
everyday consumer goods increased remarkably.

Among cereals, production fell only for sorghum and millet
despite the fact that they are the best adapted to the difficult
climatic conditions. The difficulty of increasing supplies is not
the cause of the decline in production, but inadequate outlets:
urban dwellers do not like them. In my opinion, as I have
recommended for Senegal,13 rehabilitation of these
relatively easy to produce cereals (compared to others) is vital.

In common with virtually all African countries, there have
been high growth-rates in the import-substituting foodstuffs
group (fruits and vegetables, sugar, meat, and so on).
Conversely, the export sector's production has totally collapsed,
with the exception of cotton and tea (see Table 11.3).

Differences in growth rates primarily result from the
redirection of means of production. Despite declarations in
favour of a highly labour-intensive agriculture, in reality the
agricultural labour force has been reallocated over wider areas.
Thus, the areas devoted to cereals, roots, tubers and pulses
increased by 61% (from 2.75 to 4.46 million hectares) between
1975 and 1980; the area under cereals alone accounted for 1.2
million hectares (43%) and 2.5 million hectares (56%).14
This extension took place with a marked shift in the deployment
of labour from the externally oriented, to the domestic consumer
goods sector. In 197-76 export crops covered 647.000 hectares,
but in 1983 only 602,000 hectares, a 7% reduction in five years.
This shift owed more to the peasants' determination to meet their
own food needs than to the authorities' determination to reduce
the proportion of exports.

In fact, as Table 11.3 shows, if the government's export
sector target, set in the two five-year plans had been reached,
clearly, the declines we have noted would not have occurred.
Industrialization, too, through the creation of agricultural
processing industries was a priority targetted in the 1976-81
five-year plan.

The fall in export production was not as a result of a
political choice made possible by, for example, oil rent, as in
Algeria. In Tanzania, the peasants' choice of producing for the
domestic market resulted from their determination to give
priority to their own subsistence needs, and the government's
difficulties in easily importing cereals. Consequently, between
1974-76 and 1983, yields per hectare increased in the production
of mass consumer goods and some vegetables, but export crop
yields fell. This fall was accompanied by the reallocation of the
most fertile land at the expense of export crops.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that increased yields in food
crops were due less to intensive techniques and manpower than to
the fact that, as a result of the villagization policy,
mechanization was being applied to relatively virgin lands. The
collectivization policy of the years 1969-73 and the
villagization policy moved toward mechanization, at least for
land clearing and ploughing. First, because mechanization was
intended as an incentive for people to join the ujamaa collective
farms; and secondly, because villagization would have led to the
adoption of intensive techniques only if resettlement had been
carried out on irrigated lands, and this was not possible on a
significant scale.

Therefore despite the decline in the quantity of imports
(partly because of the balance of payments crisis) the number of
tractors increased by more than 1,000 between 1970 and 1980,
keeping Tanzanian agriculture among the most highly mechanized on
the continent. In 1980, there were 18,600 mechanized units in
Tanzania, almost as many as in Zimbabwe (20,000 units) and nearly
four times those in the Ivory Coast (3.001) units), Malawi (1.200
units) and Cameroun (572 units) combined.

As a result of the very large quantity of arable land
available per inhabitant in Tanzania, the adoption of
low-intensive land-use techniques can, in the long run, be
beneficial. For an African government to increase agricultural
production within a reasonable time-span, without involvement
with transnationals that dominate the fertilizer and high yield
seed markets, it cannot avoid temporarily adopting such land-use
techniques.

The fall in agricultural and food production during the second
decade of independence meant of course that food dependence
increased. In 1970, Tanzania was largely self-sufficient in food
and food imports represented only 9.5% of exports by value of
agricultural produce. The situation deteriorated seriously
between 1975 and 1980, and by 1980 the ratio had fallen to 37%,
with more and more imports of cereals. At the same time, the
capacity to finance these imports fell sharply: in 1982, the
grant element in the quantity of imported cereals was 70% as
against 34% in 1974-75.

Attempt to control segments of accumulation: If the
growth of products and yields was not very strong, it can be
argued that this was not the most important objective. According
to Y. Rweyemamu, the Arusha Declaration and Mwongozo saw
development not simply as a process of accumulation, that is as
increasing the Tanzanian economy's capacity to produce, but as a
process of realizing an overall project with self-reliance and
socialism as its twin pillars.15 What happened to
self-reliance? In a young agriculture self-reliance can be
applied either at the level of self-sufficiency in what is
produced or at the level of self-sufficiency in the conditions of
production. Thus, export receipts were diminishing, dependence on
food imports was continuing: this was associated with a
dependence in the process of accumulation. To understand this, it
must be recalled that the model of industrialization envisaged in
the Arusha Declaration is very close to the Algerian model.

The launching of the Second Five-year Plan 1976-81 was
preceded by major debates within TANU, in which supporters of a
strategy guided by the concept of 'industrializing industries'16
(as in Algeria at the time) were pitted against advocates of a
strategy based on processing raw materials (an alternative never
seriously contemplated in Algeria). Analysis of the available
statistics indicates that the advocates constructing
'industrializing industries" won out, without the policy of
processing for export being abandoned or even considered as
non-priority.

The fact that between 1967 and 1979 the proportion of fixed
capital (other than transport equipment) in imports rose from
23.7% to 46%, while the proportion of final consumption fell from
35.6% to 13,8%,17 not only shows the development of
the first stage of an import-substitution industry but also
reflects the desire to build up basic industry.

Yet in no sense was this an industry in the service of
agriculture: the most one can note is a small chemical fertilizer
industry. Both consumption and production of chemical fertilizers
remain very limited, which explains why the rate of cover of
consumption by national production (40-50%) may appear comparable
to Algeria's, while the absolute figures are very different. This
industry's crisis is particularly serious: 3.000 metric tons in
1982-83 as against 65,000 metric tons in 1981-82.18

Generally speaking, the foreign exchange cost of agricultural
inputs rose from five million in 1970 to 32.5 million in 1981.
The country's energy bill, even taking re-exports into account,
remains very high, accounting for 21% of imports in 1981; due to
mechanization agriculture was a significant imported-oil
consumer. But moving from inputs to equipment, it can be noted
that no policy of an optimal combination of mechanization and
full employment of the labour force existed. The reduction in the
rate of mechanization after the 1973 collectivization policy was
abandoned did not lead to a reduction in the value of imported
tractors, which rose from $4.7 million in 1970 to $17 million in
1981, thus increasing by a factor of 3.6 in eleven years whereas
it was 2.5 in Malawi and four in Cameroun that initially, had
been far less mechanized.19 In short, it cannot be
said that even a beginning had been made in gaining control of
the technological conditions of accumulation.

The Arusha Declaration laid great stress on the need to gain
control of the financing of accumulation by emphasizing the
dangers of dependence in these terms: 'Independence cannot be
real if a nation depends upon gifts and loans from another for
its development... It is true that loans are better than
"free gifts".'

But Tanzania is one of the Third World countries most
dependent on external financial flows and technical assistance on
favourable terms. UNCTAD points out that 'over the last decade.
40% of Tanzania's public expenditures have been covered by
external resources'.20 In 1982, it received 10% of all
aid for the 36 'least developed countries' (LDCs). In the same
year, external aid represented 75% of imports as against 43% for
LDCs as a whole. Even on a per capita basis. Tanzania came first
that year with US$ 44 as against 36 for Mali and 24 for Malawi.21

External debt service figures for 1970 compared to those for
1982, looked modest with a not too rapid increase compared to
that of underdeveloped countries as a whole and even less than
that of the LDCs (Table 11.4).

Unlike debt servicing, compared to 1970, the balance of
payments had considerably deteriorated. The main reason for this
was the particularly favourable terms of the financial flows into
Tanzania. This 'generosity' in aid had three harmful
consequences: 1) it allowed Tanzania to pursue an investment
policy not necessarily in accordance with the imperative of full
employment: 2) it enabled the avoidance of proper integration of
debt service into planning: and 3) with this external aid
diminishing, the country had to accept its creditors' conditions,
which demanded that the socialist features in the agricultural
policy must be abandoned.

Table 11.4
Tanzania: Current account balance and external public debt
service in comparative perspective: 1970 and 1982

Current account balance (US$ millions)

Debt service

% GNP

% Export receipts

1970

1982

1970

1982

1970

1982

Tanzania

-36

-268

1.2

1.1

4.9

5.1

LDCs' average less China
& India

1.5

1.6

5.7

9.9

Middle income oil importing
countries' average

1.5

3.8

9.2

15.9

Source: World Bank, World Development Report 1984.

Attempts to nationalize agriculture: The socialist
doctrine of TANU, is one aimed at exploitation- against private
capital and for state capitalism. This doctrine does not imply
peasants' end workers' political control of the state apparatus.
During an interview some months after the adoption of the Arusha
Declaration. Julius Nyerere said: 'for us nationalization means
socialism.'23 Socialism would thus exist with the
surplus contributed directly to the state, or foreign private
capital in the form of transnational corporations, and sees
itself as incompatible only with the formation of a stratum of
nationals living off the surplus in the form of rent (from land
or other property) or profit. The concept of rentier employed to
bar nationals from business is indeed very close to the narrow
meaning given it by Joan Robinson: that shareholders who are not
managers of companies are in fact rentiers, just like the holders
of bonds and the owners of immovable property. It is thus natural
to say that 'e genuine TANU leader must not live off the sweat of
another man, nor commit any feudalistic or capitalistic actions'.23

According to Nyerere's doctrine, it is not necessary to be a
rentier or a capitalist to exploit other men or women; some
inequalities may be the same as exploitation.

There are two possible ways of dividing the people in our
country. We can put the capitalists and feudalists on one
side, and the farmers and workers on the other. But we can
also divide the people into urban dwellers on one side and
[rural dwellers] on the other. If we are not careful we might
get to the position where the real exploitation in Tanzania
is that of the town dwellers exploiting the peasants.24

The principal means of eliminating the three possible forms of
exploitation (capitalist, feudal, and exploitation of the
countryside by the towns) is the formation of a dominant state
sector, with nationalization being synonymous with socialization.
To what extent principles been was this effected, and what have
been the results in agriculture?

In 1958, three years before independence, on the subject of
private ownership of land Nyerere wrote: 'if we allow land to be
sold like a robe, within a short period there would only be a few
Africans possessing land in Tanganyika and all the others would
be tenants.'25 At that time, the most fertile African
lands had been appropriated by foreigners. In 1959, European and
Asian settlers, who formed barely 1.3% of the total population,
owned 1,270,000 hectares and the Africans 1,800,000. And, 'since
the most fertile lands went to the Europeans, the Africans were
driven back to the areas least suited to crops',26 as
in the settler colonies.

At the same time, African agrarian capitalism was developing
in regions where commercial crops were widely grown. In the Imani
region, for example, where this movement began in the early
1950s, Awiti has demonstrated the existence of three quite
distinct social classes: capitalists' petty capitalists and poor
peasants. He showed how, in this region, where maize is the
principal cash crop' the big kulaks (9% of the 349 households
counted) took 53% of the 7,230 cultivated acres, all the 24
working tractors in 1970, employed 99% of the 1,175 paid
labourers and took 76% of the monetary income estimated at
2,740,000 Tanzanian shillings.27 According to Awiti
this capitalist class also had ideological power and was 'opposed
to socialism for both material and ideological reasons'.

Private capitalists (Arabs and Indians) who controlled the
marketing networks for agricultural products as well as big
international capital did not favour the abolition of
exploitation. Forces in favour of state capitalism (African
socialism, according to TANU) had' however, successfully procured
the adoption of the 14 February 1962 law abolishing private
ownership of land: in short, ground rent and land dealings were
prohibited. But the great period of Tanzanian socialism was from
1967 to 1973, marked by the formation of ujamaa villages, with a
strong trend towards voluntary collectivization. The state
promoted collective farms by indirect means: priority in securing
credit, state assistance, provision of technical services,
tractors on credit, and so on.27 Prior to the Arusha
Declaration, the first priority was to state farms, followed by
private capitalism. Moreover, before the implementation of the
Arusha Declaration's principles, the World Bank played a leading
role in the country's development strategy by drawing up basic
development texts.

The ujamaa village is one in which the community spirit
prevails and villagers participate in economic and political
decision-making. Collectivization of the means of production was
voluntary, obviously therefore it was the poor peasants who were
most interested in its extension and expanded reproduction. This
presupposed that the class struggle would be intensified and lead
to a great social upheaval, and also that the means of production
would be mainly of national origin. Finally' it presupposed that
the law of value did not operate in all relations with other
sectors of the economy, notably in marketing and supplies. In
short, the success of the experiment presupposed delinking and a
decisive intervention in political life by the poor in the
framework of an autocentred development strategy. But, the
leaders did not choose this alternative option. Perhaps
conditions were not ripe for it. Whatever the case, the question
that arose was, what agrarian system should follow that of the
ujamaa villages system? A return to the pre-Arusha model? Or
further nationalization?

The official objective of villagization was, as has already
been noted, to regroup an excessively scattered population in
order to reduce the costs of providing basic communication
services, drinking water, education and health services. The idea
of collectivizing production in the framework of these villages
was rejected. Stress was put on the need to increase production
through agricultural policies typical of developed capitalism,
prices and exchange rate policies. In short, in future there
would be no further basic questioning of the principle of
capitalist agricultural production: advocates of ujamaa socialism
were thus beaten on this front too.

What about the problem of the capitalist middlemen with whom
the state had no desire to share the agricultural surplus? The
state could have won its gamble only if production had increased
considerably, and this did not happen. In a situation of
shortage, the parallel market developed - particularly in the
marketing of food crops -and became if not legal at least
legitimate. As Table 11.5 shows, the proportion of food crops
delivered to the official marketing channels continued to fall as
people turned to private channels.

Source. H. Mapulo. Imperialism the State and the
Peasantry in Tanzania UNITAR. Dakar 1984.

In the last analysis, if the development of private capitalism
is synonymous with the development of exploitation, it can be
said that according to TANU's own criteria, the policy of
reducing exploitation has failed, However, it must be noted that
there is no unanimous agreement on the notion of a proletariat.
Mapulo's opinion that the trend is towards turning peasants into de
facto wage-labourers in the development villages, must be
further qualified. Is this a de facto state wage-labour
force or private capital (both local capital and transnationals)
labour-force? More fundamentally, as Tanzania remains in the
capitalist system, is it right to allow kulakization to develop?
In my opinion, even when delinking is achieved, a limited and
controlled kulakization must not be condemned on a priori
grounds, as it is not necessarily opposed to a well-managed
process of socialization.

Failing the development of socialist relations of production,
is there at least a tendency towards socialism in distribution?
Since' overall, labour productivity has not risen and yields have
only marginally increased, the objective of raising the monetary
incomes of the peasantry has not been attained' indeed quite the
reverse. The fact is that trade terms were very unfavourable to
small producers during the 1970s (23% between 1969-70 and
1978-79).

This regression of rural incomes was not necessarily
accompanied by any relative deterioration in living conditions in
the countryside. Thus compared to some African countries with
comparable income levels. Tanzania led in achievements such as
literacy, primary school enrolment, access to drinking water,
calorie consumption per diem, relatively low infant mortality
rates.28

The villagization policy obviously played a stabilizing role
by reducing the costs of delivering certain services. Mapulo29
considers this to be the most ambitious programme ever carried
out in Africa. It has no equivalent in Africa and few countries
in the world have succeeded in carrying out such an operation so
rapidly. If, however, it may be considered that the villagization
policy reduced the relative gap between the rural areas and Dar
es Salaam achievements remain fragile, with the decline in
external aid, combined with the stagnation or even regression of
economic activity as serious threats. Privatization might well
accelerate the process of deterioration.

To conclude, in both Tanzania and Algeria even if the effort
accomplished on the social level is very significant and must be
preserved' the achievement of self-reliance and socialism has
barely begun.